It is not an exaggeration to say that the boxed excerpts
constitute the "lifeblood" of this book. I have included these
tables, figures, and passages of text from published research reports
to illustrate both good and not-so-good practices, to instruct via the
words of others, and to demonstrate that contemporary researchers do,
in fact, use the statistical procedures discussed in the textual portions
of this book. A total of 674 excerpts appear in this edition, an increase
of 15.4 percent over the number included in the previous edition. The
vast majority of these excerpts are new, with only 34 being carried forward
from the second edition. These numbers, I feel, legitimize the claim that
this book contains an extensive array of materials that illustrate what
contemporary researchers put into their research reports.

It should be noted that the 674 excerpts included here
were not indiscriminately chosen. On the contrary, each one was carefully
hand selected because of its ability to help others understand a concept
or practice. Moreover, a concerted effort was made to select excerpts
from a variety of disciplines. This was done so as to increase the reader's
ability to cross disciplinary lines when reviewing research reports.

In contrast to those books that focus on a single discipline
(with titles such as Statistics for Education or Research
in Nursing), the manifest purpose here is to help readers feel more
at ease when confronted by research claims that emanate from disciplines
other than their own. (Clearly, the purpose of and issues related to a
one-way ANOVA are the same regardless of whether the data come from psychology
or ecology or epidemiology.) Unless people have the ability to decipher
and critique research in a multidisciplinary fashion, they become easy
targets for those who inadvertently or purposefully present research "evidence"
that comes from studies characterized by ill-conceived questions, poor
methodology, and sloppy statistical analysis.